Opinion

The more you hear about bungled implementation of federal fishing regulations, the harder it becomes to argue with Sen. Scott Brown’s call for a change in leadership.

Kerry has not endorsed Brown’s call for Lubchenco’s dismissal and remains hopeful she can rebuild the relationship between her office and the industry it regulates. But he is clearly aware of how tenuous the situation is.

“Tensions between federal regulators and the fishing community have reached a boiling point beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed in my 26 years in the Senate,” Kerry wrote in his letter to Lubchenco. “ I cannot emphasize enough that now is a critical moment for action.”

NOAA has made motions to indicate it understands the damage it has done and is ready to mend fences. But given how poisonous this relationship has become, there are legitimate questions as to whether Lubchenco will be able to effectively lead such a turnaround.

Read the complete editorial from The Patriot-Ledger

 

 

 

 

 

Testimony of Michael Conathan before the House Committee on Natural Resources: The National Ocean Policy will increase government efficiency and enable sound management of public resources.

A June 2011 report by the nonpartisan Joint Ocean Commission, comprised of members of both the Pew and U.S. Ocean Commissions, expressed strong ongoing support for comprehensive ocean planning and the National Ocean Policy, stating, “the current sector-by-sector management system is incapable of providing the integrated, comprehensive, and flexible approach needed to ensure that conflicts among proposed uses are minimized and potential benefits enhanced.”

In fact, strategic planning maximizes organizational efficiency and use of taxpayer dollars. Contrary to the false depiction of the National Ocean Policy as excessive government regulation, it will bring all interested parties to the table before key management decisions are made. This will improve opportunities for industry, communities, nongovernmental organizations, and citizens to participate in the planning process and facilitate sustainable economic growth by providing transparency and predictability for economic investments. The alternative is allowing developers of individual projects to drive the regulatory process without adequate guidance from regulators or input from alternate stakeholders, a process that has been shown to lead to a seemingly endless string of lawsuits, political quagmires, and a poisonous investment climate.

There is no better example of the inefficiencies inherent in the piecemeal system than the offshore wind industry. Offshore wind is a viable and rapidly growing piece of the energy picture in other parts of the world. Today European countries have installed nearly 3,000 megawatts of offshore wind facilities, and Europe and China combined have permitted more than 40,000 megawatts of wind turbines in their oceans. The United States has permitted exactly 488 megawatts, and we have yet to break ground on our first turbine.

Read a transcript of the entire testimony at The Center for American Progress Action Fund.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of NH boats are under 5 net tons because that is the maximum allowed to be imported from Canada. My boat sits on a mooring right next to Canadian-built boats that carry more fish and tow bigger nets that are five tons. As a fisherman, Mr. Allen knows this, but still cites it as a reason that New Hampshire somehow has increased its vessel size. The argument is false.

Next, Richard uses a graph that shows New Hampshire with no landings prior to the mid-1970s. This, too, is false, but here blame may lie in the source. New Hampshire had large landings in the 1960s and '70s. I know this because I worked as crew on those boats. The problem is New Hampshire had no wholesale docking facilities then, so the fish were loaded into pickup trucks and sold in Massachusetts. Apparently, if the landings were recorded at all, they were seen as Massachusetts landings.

I worked on boats that landed over 200,000 pounds of fish in April, May and June, the months that have been closed to New Hampshire fishermen for more than the last 10 years. This is a particularly important point because we fish for what comes to us, as we are too small to follow the fish offshore. When the time you catch fish the fishery is closed, you cannot establish catch history. These months were the time when the entire New Hampshire fleet historically made over 50 percent of their income for the year.

Read the complete letter at SeaCoast Online.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bay State's gripes about Washington bureaucrats' bad science, biased administration and overzealous enforcement of fishing regulations are finally gaining traction.

On the heels of Sen. Scott Brown's call for the resignation of NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco came word Monday that her boss, newly installed Commerce Secretary John Bryson, will be coming to Massachusetts later this year to assess the situation with his own eyes and ears.

He should find plenty to give him pause in the shrinking fleets in Gloucester, New Bedford and other fishing communities.

Brown put it well in a statement that followed his visit Saturday to the nation's oldest and once busiest fishing port in Gloucester:

"Just a few weeks ago, Administrator Lubchenco told us at a hearing in Boston that the fishing industry is on the rebound. That incredible statement demonstrated a total lack of understanding of the situation in Gloucester, New Bedford and across New England. I hoped that she would stick around to get the real facts from the fishermen and scientists assembled to testify after her. Instead, she left early.

Read the complete opinion piece from The Salem News

 

 

 

 

Fishermen need to take their case once more — louder and in far greater numbers than before — back to the Capitol and/or White House for a second "United We Fish" rally, perhaps on the two-year anniversary of the first.

It was in February 2010 that up to 5,000 independent commercial and recreational fishermen, backed by various state and federal lawmakers, turned out for an unprecedented show of allied strength on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol for what became known as the "United We Fish" rally.

And in the 20 months since that day, a lot of issues have come to light regarding the fishing industry and our own federal government's heavy-handed means of regulating it under National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco.

Just days after that rally, we heard damning testimony at congressional hearings from Gloucester to Washington on excessive NOAA enforcement tactics documented by the Commerce Department's

Inspector General's office — offenses so severe that, by this past summer, they prompted a Cabinet-level apology from the feds and reparations to fishermen and waterfront businesses.
We have also seen congressional votes to put the clamps on any new expansion of Lubchenco's beloved catch share management program, which has triggered a commodities market based on fishermen's catch allocations, and is funneling more quota into the hands of larger corporations while driving smaller, independent boats right out of business.

Read the complete editorial from The Gloucester Times

 

 

 

 

 

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts says “[b]ecause of federal regulations limiting fishing in our waters, a lot of our fisherman have been put out of business or pushed the brink.”

Sen. Charles Schumer of New York says the Obama administration's "flawed catch share policy…. could irreparably damage our fishing industry.”

Read the complete opinion piece at The New York Post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next battle over President Obama’s job-killing regulations may take place on the Atlantic Coast, where fishermen, and the senators and congressmen who represent them, are voicing mounting frustration at the Obama administration’s “catch-share” rules for the fishing industry.

The Republican senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, on Saturday stood with fishermen in Gloucester and called on Mr. Obama to fire the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Jane Lubchenco.

But the frustration at Ms. Lubchenco, who also serves as under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, extends well beyond Republican, Tea Party-backed senators or libertarians for whom the idea of a federally enforced “share” program sounds like some nightmare out of an Ayn Rand novel.

Read the complete opinion piece at The New York Sun.

 

 

 

 

John Kerry's been out on the front lines for us on this one, and I'm glad he is. He's doing what a senior senator should do, using his clout, and the work he's doing on our behalf in Washington may be my last best shot to getting back to what I love.

It all started when I bought a new boat in April 2008. I relied on a landing history letter from the National Marine Fisheries Service that the previous owner requested for the sale of the vessel. Based on that landing history, I thought this boat would be worth my investment because the information from NMFS led me to believe that the permit history would be enough to make a living when the catch share quotas were implemented.

But when I got my catch allocation for the next year, it was well below what I was promised — and frankly, what I needed. In fact, now NMFS was telling me that my boat had an entirely different landing history — flatly contradicting their original letter.

I understand the rules, and I've always done my best to follow them. We all do. Now under the new catch shares program, too many fishermen I know have watched their livelihoods thrown into danger. But we're trying to follow those rules, too, and like it or not, we've all made business decisions based on this new system. Scrapping it now could mean even more chaos for all of our families, without a viable second option. This transition has been extremely hard for the small boat fleet. In fact, it has been tragic. The simple fact is that regulators didn't have the right information on hand when they launched the new system. So now we're facing real consequences for our bottom lines every time they make an administrative error. I don't think it's too much to ask that they make those mistakes right.

I think we can all agree that our government should help us, not hurt us, when it comes to putting in a hard day's work and providing for our families. I've asked time and again for them to fix their mistake that cost me my boat, with no luck. I even called Sen. John Kerry for help, and I'm glad I did. Once I made the call to Kerry's office, I was connected to Amy Kerrigan. Since that first phone call she has been investigating my situation tirelessly. It's nice to have someone that fights for you like it's their own fight. Not only has Sen. Kerry been there for me, so has his staff. I know the federal regulators in Washington haven't always been up front on these issues, but Kerry convinced me that he gets what we're up against and he's taking this issue very seriously and personally to get a just resolution to my case.

In my case, I couldn't have asked for more. Kerry has practically made my fight his own, and he's still standing by my side to help get the fair deal I deserve. I also know he's made the phone calls, written the letters, insisted on the meetings and forced the right people to get together, and he's been relentless in his bottom line that we need to do more to protect the New England fishery and stop the death of the small boat fleet.

Read the complete article from The Standard-Times

 

 

 

 

 

In case you missed it, and if you did you are not alone, you can no longer keep a black sea bass this fishing season. As of Oct. 17, NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service has shut down the black sea bass fishery for all recreational anglers fishing the waters of the South Atlantic.

The reason is overfishing, of course. You see, the government number-crunchers have determined that you and I and all of our hook-and-line offshore fishing brethren from North Carolina to Key West have been hauling out black sea bass to the tune of some 341,747 pounds (gutted weight) since June 1.

Even though the new bag limit in place since then has been five black sea bass per angler, somehow fishing was so robust for black sea bass, we all just jammed up our freezers full of them.

As a result, we must now stop fishing for them, and cannot take one home until June 1, 2012.

Anyone who has ever reeled in a sea bass knows they may average 3 pounds. A 6-pounder is huge and rare. That means that some 110,000 sea bass have been taken off the reefs in the past 4.5 months or roughly 22,000 bag limits have gone to the fish cleaning tables.

Read the complete opinion piece from TCPalm.com

 

 

 

 

 

Sen. John Kerry has honed his message to NOAA, and it's paying dividends for the region's fishing industry. 

He delivered an 11-point letter to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco on Wednesday, and Lubchenco sent out her own letter before the day was out with a measure of good news.

Kerry's letter pressed on the oft-repeated points of the financial hardships suffered by so many smaller fishermen, and the need for improvements in both data collection and enforcement.

Lubchenco's response offered the news the NOAA will pick up the tab for the mandated onboard observers at least until April 2013. This allows another full year of management. Lubchenco promises that NOAA will "contract with an independent group to initiate a participatory evaluation process of the management reforms under way." She also said, "As a result of the management review, NOAA has been working to improve science collaboration with state and private research institutions, enhance data management systems to assist the fishing industry with more timely and accurate information, and strengthen outreach and communications."

Kerry addressed other issues, as well, including proper restitution for fishermen beset with obstacles to success because of NOAA's own administrative mistakes.

Read the complete opinion piece from The Standard-Times